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This term I am taking Dr. Gertmenian for Economics. I am finally in the class I fought so hard to get into. A couple of weeks back, Dr. G referred to a list of 100 books that every educated person should read as they will be referred to throughout their professional career in some shape or form.

I found where the list was maintained in the class' Yahoo Technical Groups and put together a small procedure that set the book titles as searches into EBAY's Half.com site. Half.com is a terrific market for buying books if you are not in a terrific hurry to receive them. My recommendation is when selecting a seller, find one with a high rating and close to you. Most sellers have their locations listed. Avoid any seller below a 97% rating.

Most links below are searches on the general phrase AUTHOR/Title, some variations will exist, but since some of the variations had interesting options (especially on the harder titles), I left the additional results rather than going to the specific title Dr. G recommended. Where ever possible, I included references to free versions of text (e.g. the National Archive for the Constitution and Declaration of Independence, bible gateway for books of the gospel and USC for the Qur'an)

Somewhere out there I have seen a place where you can keep a personal book list and show your progress, but the name of the site escapes me, I will post it once I remember what it was.

Dr. Gertmenian's List of 100 books:

7 Completed as of 12/1/2007

ADLER How to Read a Book * READ FIRST (Completed 7/15/2007)
AESCHYLUS Agamemnon + HOMER The Iliad
AESOP Fables (Completed 8/8/2008)
ARISTOTLE Politics
AUSTEN Pride and Prejudice
BALDWIN The Fire Next Time
BIBLE Job and Matthew + KORAN Chapter 47 (Currently Reading)
BOCCACCIO The Decameron
BUCK Good Earth
BUNYAN Pilgrim's Progress
BURTON Arabian Nights
CAESAR Gallic War Commentaries + VIRGIL Aeneid
CAMUS The Stranger
CARLYLE On Heroes and Hero Worship
CARROLL Alice in Wonderland
CERVANTES Don Quixote
CHAUCER Canterbury Tales
CHURCHILL Blood, Sweat, and Tears
CLAUSEWITZ On War + SUNTZU The Art of War
COLERIDGE Ancient Mariner
CONFUCIUS Analects + LAO-TSE Tao-Te-Ching
CONRAD Lord Jim
COOPER Last of the Mohicans
CRANE Red Badge of Courage
DANA Two Years Before the Mast
DANTE Inferno
DARWIN Voyage of the Beagle [Online Version](Completed 7/27/2008)
DEFOE Robinson Crusoe [Online Version] (Completed 12/1/2007)
DICKENS Tale of Two Cities
DOSTOYEVSKY Crime and Punishment
DOYLE Sherlock Holmes + COLLINS The Moonstone
DREISER American Tragedy
DUMAS Count of Monte Cristo
DURANT Story of Philosophy
EINSTEIN Evolution of Physics
ELIOT Silas Marner
EMERSON Essays
EURIPIDES Medea + SOPHOCLES Oedipus Rex
FAULKNER The Sound and the Fury
FLAUBERT Madame Bovary
FITZGERALD The Great Gatsby
FORSTER A Passage to India
FRANKLIN Autobiography + SCHWEITZER My Life and Thoughts
GOETHE Faust
HALE Man Without a Country
HAMILTON + MADISON Federalist Papers + The U.S. Constitution
HARRIS I'm OK -- You're OK
HAWTHORNE Scarlet Letter
HEILBRONER Worldly Philosophers (Completed 2/20/2007)
HEMINGWAY Farewell to Arms
HUDSON Green Mansions
HUGO Les Misérables
HUXLEY Brave New World [Online Version] (Completed 7/22/2007)
IRVING Sketch Book
JAMES Turn of the Screw + O'HENRY Gift of the Magi
JEFFERSON Declaration of Independence + ROUSSEAU The Social Contract
JOYCE Portrait of the Artist
KELLER Story of My Life
KENNEDY Profiles in Courage
KHAYYAM The Rubaiyat
KIPLING Captains Courageous
LONDON Call of the Wild
MACHIAVELLI The Prince [Online Version] (Completed 9/30/2007)
MALORY La Morte D'Arthur + TENNYSON Idylls of the King
MELVILLE Moby Dick
MILL On Liberty
MILLER Death of a Salesman
MILTON Paradise Lost
MICHENER Tales of the South Pacific
MOLIERE Misanthrope
MOORE Utopia
ORCZY Scarlet Pimpernel
ORWELL Animal Farm
OVID Metamorphoses
PAINE Common Sense
PARKMAN Oregon Trail
PLATO The Republic (Currently Reading) + MARX Communist Manifesto
POE Tales
POPE Essay on Man
RAND Atlas Shrugged
SAROYAN Human Comedy
SARTRE No Exit
SCOTT Ivanhoe
SHAKESPEARE Hamlet
SHELLEY Frankenstein + STOKER Dracula
SHAW Man and Superman
SINCLAIR The Jungle
STEINBECK Grapes of Wrath
STEVENSON Treasure Island
STOWE Uncle Tom's Cabin
SWIFT Gulliver's Travels
THOREAU Walden (Completed 9/1/2007) [Online Version]
TOLSTOY Anna Karenina
TOYNBEE Study of History + HART The 100
TWAIN Huckleberry Finn
VERNE Twenty Thousand Leagues
VOLTAIRE Candide
WALLACE Ben Hur
WILDE The Picture of Dorian Gray
WILLIAMS Streetcar Named Desire

Honorable Mention:
SEUSS Oh, The Places You’ll Go (Completed 12/31/71)

A little off-topic, but this is an interesting phenomenon I ran into this weekend:

There is a new scam on the internet may be an interesting story. Some foreign sites are setting themselves up on price grabbing sites such as Google's Froogle, MySimon and BizRate with prices for consumer electronics at 20% less than what the lowest competitor charges. The low price moves them up in the price grabber rankings and makes them more visibile to technophiles that are looking for a good deal on electronics and probably have a good amount of money to spend. The sites look legitimate, but when a customer tries to purchase an item they learn they have to place a minimum order of $650-$700 dollars and the sites do not accept creidt cards. The sites require payment by check, money order or wire transfer. The sites are setting themselves up in a fly by night fashion, with a simple template, they go up, lure money out of consumers worldwide and shutdown within a couple of months. A perfect example of this problem is a site called xbstore.com, the site is hosted by ixwebhosting.com in Kentucky, but the business is really run out of Spain. xbstore.com has only been up since mid-January, the unscruipulous owner picked it up from an expired domain list in November. I believe this is the same people that ran another rogue site called MercadoMall.com also from Spain that was shut down in December and Elmpoint.com which was shut down in the fall. The chain of deception continues not only from this business, but to other businesses. Some shoppers are skeptical of the practices at sites like xbstore.com, but then use the prices they find published there to get price matching from other sites and brick and mortar stores that will match any advertised price. I was recently shopping for a replacement stereo faceplate for my current system when I stumbled on the xbstore.com site from a Froogle search. After looking closer at the policies and newsgroups that were starting to report on xbstore, I then contacted ixnethosting and the Federal Trade Commission regarding this site in hopes of getting it shut down. I think this would be an interesting investigative article for consumers and business owners alike. Telling people what to watch for when shopping online couple be useful as well, a good source is http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/conline/pubs/online/payments.htm. This new scam is in it's infancy and will grow without public education and regulator involvement.

***UPDATE***
On March 8, 2007, ixnethosting suspended xbstore.com's website. I don't know if my complaints to them or the Federal Trade Commission shut them down, but I am pleased that the site no longer shows up and froogle listing associated to them no longer exists. While these scammers may have lost this site, I am sure another is in the works if not already running. Caveat Emptor!

What a bunch buffoons at Prentice Hall!

Long story short, if you are looking for Kotler's Marketing Management 12e MP3s, go to http://www.audible.com/adbl/site/products/ProductDetail.jsp?productID=BK_PEAR_000002&BV_UseBVCookie=Yesdo not use Prentice Hall, especially if you are in a rush. See the full story below....

I already have issues with the college textbook industry (Now being a proud member of CALPIRG) and how they have the audacity to charge $180 for Philip Kotler and Kevin Lane Keller's Marketing Management 12e in the United States and yet charge 495 ruppee's (Or about $11) in India for the same book. With my newly learned marketing lingo, I now understand how obscene price discrimination can get.

Anyway, since the class started over 10 weeks ago, one of the interesting add ons to the book was an MP3 study guide (Marketing Management, VangoNotes Audio Study Guide, 12/E ISBN: 0-13-228147-3) from Vango (www.vangonotes.com). I was highly interested back in early January when the class started, but according to Prentice Hall, the materials were not to be available until February 1. Fair enough, midterms would still be a few weeks off. Prentice hall also referenced Vango's website, incorectly http://www.vangonotes.comhttp://www.vangonotes.com, but I was able to use my superior technological abilities to figure the issue out and get to the website, try out the demo and set my mind to purchase the item. Note Vango Notes does not sell directly or provide any contact links on their site. Strange, but whatever.

8 days later and still no availability, so I contact Prentice Hall, I alert them in an email that their available date is past due and their link to Vango Notes is incorrect. They thank me for the information about the site (Still broken at that point) and I am told to contact the local rep, Nicola Greenfield regarding the release date. No repsonse to emails or voice mails from Nicola, but they do finally fix the URL for VangoNotes.

On February 14, I finally get word back from Prentice Hall that the new release date is expected to be March 1. Woo Hoo! Midterms be damned, at least I can get it for the final in April (I Hope).

On Monday, February 27, our prefessor receives an email from Prentice Hall that the MP3s will be made available. I have optimism that if they are contacting the professor that they will meet their commitment.

March 1 came and went, again I submit another support case. Where are the MP3s? On March 3 I receive a response:

"Dear Mr. Brown,
The Kotler, Marketing Management, VangoNotes Audio Study Guide, 12/E was delayed in production but is now complete. They are still determining the exact live date but expect to have this product posted for sale by mid-March at the latest.
We apologize for any inconvenience this has caused.
Should you have additional questions relating to this issue, feel free to reply to this message so that we may assist you further..."

So I faithfully check every day. Nothing! Availability date still estimated as 3/1/2006. Meanwhile, one of my classmates was smart enough to check other MP3 websites and found it already availalble!!! Why Vango does not list available sources or Prentice Hall do the honorable thing and point me to Audible.com is beyond me. Now I am going to download and purchase form Audible. I am contacting the rest of my classmates and getting them to purchase their copy from audible.com.

So another purchase from an American student lost for Prentice Hall (2 semesters I have bought their books in Grey Market version from http://www.half.com) I didnt get the ruppee price, but still paid less that a 1/3 than the bookstore's price. One of my team members recommended I enter the Business Plan competition undercutting the bookstore by flying to India each trimester and buy everyone's books for them there and booking the miles hahaha.

3/22/2006 Update. The Audible files will download in a proprietary .aa format. This makes the audio files less than portable. I still think this is great resource, but will require a little elbow grease. If you are a new Audible member, you can get the audio files for $9 (1 free download with your subscription). I would then make sure you download the Audible Manager. Then go to Goldwave and download their audio studio application. With about 10 minutes of playing with Goldwave, you should have it down. With the Audible Manager loaded, you can easily convert the files from .aa to .mp3 with Goldwave. The key is to reduce the bitrate to 48 kbps. Default conversion rates triple the file size. At 48 kpbs, the files only increase 50%, but all the chapters will be about 230Mb, easily fitting on an MP3 jukebox CD or flash drive.

Oh, and still no MP3s available on the Prentice Hall site. ;-)

3/25/2006 Update. Prentice Hall finally made the product available, however it's a link, guess where it goes? Back to Audible. Do yourself a favor and go to the link at the top of this post directly to avoid Prentice Hall getting a referral that they dont deserve.

OK, so I am in the off weeks between school and work so I am trying to take care of business around the house and work and career and personal growth and and and...

I am working on the Personal Power tapes duing my commute (Sure beats the radio). Anyway, at this point I found it pretty releiving. I kind of wish I had listened to this during or prior to OB as it would have helped in a few situations. And now to get off on a rant, I couldnt stop laughing at a radio ad where someone made the suggestion about putting a picture of some kids on their desk to avoid being overworked and the voice over said "You give losers a bad name!" That last night was so painful and so full of bad advice and self-loathing, I still wont shake that last session for a while.

OK, back to topic. My main issue areas were:
Fix up the office
reduce the pain pile
manage time better
work out and lose weight

Here are some reasons why I really need to fix up the office:
Its a mess
it is hard to find things
it makes it hard to concentrate
it smells bad
the furniture is not coordinated
I cant find books in the bookshelf
the entertainment center makes for a crappy storage cabinet
the walpaper is disturbing
Much of the stuff can be thrown out
Its not condusive to a work envirnment, it gives my daughter a bad impression on how to maintain a home.

Benefits: Accomplishment, Pride, easy to work in, look better, better storage, ability to find things, value to the house.

Reduce the pain pile
It is costing me money
it leads to procrastination
It will prevcent me from excelling in school
I could get in trouble
it adds to the clutter
it is annoying
it makes me unhappy
it takes up more time the more it grows
It keeps me from being responsible
It stresses me out

Benefits: More money, less stress, less clutter, completeness.

Manage time better:
I do not finish tasks on time
I cant seem to get ahead
The more time goes on, the more gets stacked behind
it affects the quality of my work
It makes me appear undependable
I will need to work more hours
I wont be able to enjoy a personal life
I will be stressed
I wont appear capable
It will make it difficult to lead

Benefits: Ahead of the game, able to manage better


Lose Weight and Work out:
It is making me unhealthy
It makes it harder to keep up with my daughter
it will cost me my life
my clothes wont fit
I wont have energy
I will have to go on medications
I wont be in good condition
I wont be able to play sports
I would not be able to drive a race car again
I will be less attractive to my loved ones

I will be strong, fit and appreciate my body more.


To reset pattterns I will:
Make the Kerns Woot!Woot! noise
ask "how is this debate is adding value to the team's mission?"
Be honest in my opinion, not just say what the person wants to hear
try to reach points to back down with an adversary

Grades are in, and A's in both the classes. In break right now, but I am working the Personal Power II cds, fresh off of ebay. Anyway, I plan on incorporating this journal into the other one. The 2 things I plan on doing is call my mom, we have had a tiff for a while over finishing some eBay transactions for her and getting back to the gym. There's my day 1 goals. We'll see where it goes from here.

Well, Term 1 has finally come to a close. Although I was a bit disappointed with the outcome of the first term classes, I am glad that I am in the program. Behavior in organizations kind of fizzled in its final weeks. I had a thought go through my mind that I just could not shake. Why am I paying $300 a night to listen to a bunch of other people who spent $300 a night regurgitate what I just read in a book. The professors involvement towards the end was limited and very little new insight was generated. Same with quant. I did pick up some nuggets and hopefully I did ok on the finals. Next term will be just one class and it will be more practical for my career, marketing. I also hope to feel out how the new job will be on workload.